


Honesty

by draculard



Category: Star Wars Legends: Outbound Flight - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Burial Ceremonies, Funeral Customs, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Not compliant with Disney canon, Textual Ghosts, Thrawn and Thrass's Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27246241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Early on in life — not long after their parents died — Thrass came to understand that in order to raise his younger brother, he would have to do something anathema to any twelve-year-old boy. In fact, he would have to do something so painful that it could possibly cause him anguish — or at least, embarrassment — on a daily basis.He had to be honest.Abouteverything.
Relationships: Thrass | Mitth'ras'safis & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Honesty

Early on in life — not long after their parents died — Thrass came to understand that in order to raise his younger brother, he would have to do something anathema to any twelve-year-old boy. In fact, he would have to do something so painful that it could possibly cause him anguish — or at least, embarrassment — on a daily basis.

He had to be honest.

About _everything_.

This, he thought to himself at the ritual sinking of his parents’ bodies, was a job which had always fallen to their mother until now. She’d answered all of Thrawn’s questions and spared Thrass the frustration of it. She’d spared him the necessity of getting a toddler dressed and fed and ready for school, as well. And she’d spared him the fear of budgeting money, of balancing fuel for the climate control unit with the month’s groceries and other necessities...

Well, she’d spared Thrass a lot of things.

He clasped Thrawn’s hand in his, and when his little brother started sniffling and shivering — whether from the cold or from grief, Thrass couldn’t tell — he lifted him into his arms, holding him close for warmth. Thrawn twisted until his elbow was pressed against Thrass’s chest, his eyes fixed on the edge of the iceberg, the glacial ocean beyond it.

He wasn’t crying, Thrass noticed. He was staring out at the pallet where their parents’ bodies lay; there was a furrow between his eyebrows, a pinched downturn to his lips, but he wasn’t letting himself cry. Not here. Not in public, with their neighbors watching.

Seeing this, Thrass tried to stop himself from crying, too. If a three-year-old could manage it, then surely _he_ could. But the tears kept rolling silently down his cheeks, starting off hot and then turning cold as the air froze them almost instantly. 

It wasn’t right, he told himself. At a gesture from the master of ceremonies, he walked with Thrawn in his arms toward the pallet, then set him down gently. Thrawn took a confident step forward as soon as his feet hit the hard scrim of ice; he stepped right up to the edge of the pallet, staring down at his parents’ bodies — at their uncovered faces, already started to discolor — at the embroidery on their sleeves that Thrawn and Thrass had agonized over the night before. That Thrass had finished when Thrawn fell asleep.

That Thrawn had _failed_ to finish because he couldn’t stop crying then, either. He’d taken the embroidery next door to Ipsa’lir’akan, and he’d sobbed incoherently with the funeral garments in his hands until she’d pulled him inside. He’d carried Thrawn over next, fast asleep in his brother’s arms, at Ipsa’lir’akan’s insistence; they let him sleep near the fire while Ipsa’lir’akan finished the work and Thrass himself tried not to doze, tried to force himself to pay attention and help her out so he could do it the next time—

The next time someone in his family— 

Thrawn cocked his head, his eyes narrowing as he took the embroidery in. His gaze shifted from the clumsy stitches on his mother’s left sleeve to the small, neat stitches on her right. He glanced up at Thrass, his eyebrows furrowed as he noticed where his and Thrass’s inexperienced efforts stopped, processed the difference, realized someone must have helped them while he was sleeping — and then raised his arms, clutching at Thrass’s pants in a silent plea to be held again.

Mutely, Thrass shook his head. Gasping past his tears, he pointed to the side, redirecting Thrawn’s attention toward the stack of painted rocks not far away.

“You have to choose one,” he said, his voice broken. “You choose one for Mother, and I’ll choose one for Father. Okay?”

Thrawn looked at the stack and swayed on his feet, but stopped himself from moving forward, still clutching with one hand at Thrass’s pants. His thoughtful expression wavered; he raised his hand to his mouth but — perhaps remembering a dozen admonishments from the man who now lay dead before them — stopped just short of sucking his thumb; instead, he twisted his hand around and chewed on his knuckles, and Thrass had to kneel down and gently take his hand away before he broke the skin. His heart pounded in his chest, and he had to work to keep his face blank, with no traces of alarm or concern; Thrawn had never made thumb-sucking a habit, not with how much trouble it got him into, and he’d stopped doing it entirely more than a year ago. To see him revert to that behavior now…

Thrass took a deep breath, still crouching before his brother. Over Thrawn’s shoulder, he saw the purple discoloration across Mother’s cheekbones and over her closed eyes.

“Choose a rock,” he said, more calmly this time. 

“ _Why_?” asked Thrawn. He leaned against Thrass heavily, trying to force the older boy to pick him up again, and Thrass had no choice but to put his hands on Thrawn’s shoulders and firmly push him away. He kept his hands there, letting the warmth of his palms bleed through the thin fabric of Thrawn’s coat.

It took him three attempts to find his breath and explain.

“To weigh them down,” he said, blinking rapidly; a fresh batch of tears rolled down his cheeks, unseen by Thrawn. Blindly, still looking away, Thrawn reached out and touched Thrass’s chest, his tiny fingers curling tight in the fabric there. “Do you understand?” Thrass asked. 

Thrawn’s eyes tracked over the pile of rocks, then back to the pallets. “Because bodies float,” he said. Thrass nodded, his tears now dry. He wondered if it was common for someone Thrawn’s age to differentiate between ‘people’ and ‘bodies.’ He decided he didn’t want to know.

“Yes,” he said. “Exactly. So we—”

But Thrawn wasn’t done. Staring down into his mother’s face, speaking quickly and tripping over his words, he gripped Thrass’s hand and said, “Because they float to the surface. And the birds eat them and put holes in them. And the sun makes them rot, and anyone who’s standing around can _see_ them. They—”

He covered his mouth suddenly, staring up at Thrass with wet, pleading eyes. Thrass swallowed past a lump in his throat and forced himself to nod.

“Go choose a rock,” he said in a hoarse whisper, patting Thrawn on the shoulder. He heard a muffled sob from beneath Thrawn’s hand and when he spoke again, his own voice was breaking. “Go on. I’ll help you.”

Thrawn took short, frightened, halting steps toward the pile. He stood frozen beside it once he reached it, his eyes squeezed shut and leaking tears, his shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. It would be useless to tell him again, Thrass realized. He took the first stone from the pile, painted vibrantly with a scene of sunset over Rentor, and then he closed his fingers around Thrawn’s left wrist and gently guided his hand away from his face.

Thrawn’s sobs grew louder, no longer quite so muffled. He kept his eyes closed, but he opened his hand obediently, allowing Thrass to press the rock into his palm.

“Okay?” Thrass asked.

With a series of harsh, shallow breaths, Thrawn cracked open his eyes and peered down at the rock. He shut them again almost instantly, nodding his assent. Thrass didn’t waste much time on choosing his own rock, either; he grabbed one blindly, without checking the painting on it, and led Thrawn back to the pallet.

Behind them, the crowd began to stir. Thrass was hyper-aware of the villagers lining up to choose their own rocks now that he and Thrawn — the only blood family at the ceremony — had made their selections. When they reached the pallet again, Thrawn forced himself to open his eyes and watch as Thrass guided his hand to an open pouch of canvas attached to the wooden boards.

They deposited their weights together; Thrass dropped his first, then Thrawn, half a second later. The rocks clattered together.

By the time the line was done, Thrass knew, the canvas pouches would all be full, and the woman in charge of the ceremony would seal them up and cover their mother’s and father's faces — and then the villagers would come together one last time to push the pallet into the ocean. 

He turned away, refusing to watch it. Refusing to watch any of it. He felt Thrawn’s hand in his and knew from the way his wrist bent to accommodate it that Thrawn, unlike Thrass, hadn’t turned around. Thrawn watched the ceremony silently, no longer crying aloud, and when it was over — when the muted splash made Thrass flinch, when the villagers dispersed in a quiet murmur all around him — he turned and buried his face in Thrass’s leg.

He was shivering, Thrass realized dimly. They both were.

It was time to go home.

He took a shaky breath to brace himself and wiped the last of the tears off his cheeks. Half-turning, he grabbed Thrawn beneath the arms and picked him up, balancing him on his hip. Small arms encircled his neck, careful not to choke him; with a quiet sigh, Thrawn shifted until his face was hidden against Thrass’s shoulder, so the other villagers couldn’t see him crying.

They walked home in silence. It was dusk now, and a light snow was falling, and Thrass’s teeth were chattering by the time he reached their darkened house and pushed open the door. He carried Thrawn to the rusted climate control box on the wall, fiddling hopelessly with it until the broken circuits shocked his fingers and made him turn away.

Thrawn might be able to fix it, he thought. Thrawn had always paid close attention when Father fixed things — and he always remembered what he saw, whereas Thrass let his mind wander the whole time and forgot what he’d learned moments later. But for now, Thrawn seemed disinclined to even raise his head; he kept his face buried in Thrass’s shoulder, shivering against him, and so Thrass abandoned the climate control box and crossed to the fireplace instead.

They used it more than most families in the village, he knew. None of his other classmates knew how to start a fire without help from an adult; they wouldn’t spend the night at his house either, because they said it was always too cold, even when there was a fire going and the faulty climate control box wasn’t on the fritz. With a sigh, Thrass sat before the fireplace and stoked the still-warm coals a bit, shifting Thrawn in his arms until he could reach out and grab one small piece of wood at a time from the stack against the wall.

By the time he finished, Thrawn, ever curious, had lifted his head to watch. There were tear stains on his face, but his expression was thoughtful and stoic, not distressed.

The fire crackled, growing taller and warmer. Thrass shifted position until he was sitting on the cold stone floor with his legs crossed and Thrawn in his lap. He wrapped his arms around Thrawn’s waist, pulling him closer, and rested his chin on his brother’s soft blue-black hair.

“Thrass?” said Thrawn a moment later, his voice raw.

“Mm?” said Thrass.

“Why did you choose that rock for Father?” asked Thrawn.

For a moment, Thrass wasn’t sure what to say. He stayed quiet, waiting; he knew that if he didn’t speak, eventually Thrawn’s curiosity would force him to elaborate, and maybe then Thrass would be able to choose an answer.

“The one with the painting of an icehound on it,” said Thrawn eventually. “You picked a sunset for Mother and an icehound for Father. Why?”

Thrass sighed, letting his eyes slide shut. He remembered how, just last week, at the kitchen table, Thrawn had asked his mother why she and Father slept in separate places — he in the master bedroom, she in the room that had once been Thrass’s, in the bed that had once been his before their big fight two years ago.

It had hurt her to tell him the truth, Thrass knew. He could see it in her eyes. But she’d told him nonetheless — and later, when Thrass and his mother were alone together, he’d told her perhaps she shouldn’t have, and she’d only given him a dead-eyed look and shrugged.

 _How else will he learn?_ she’d asked. And then, hands twitching over the cutting board, she’d jerked her shoulder up in a shrug and said, _He doesn’t understand these things like you and I do, Thrass. He can learn just about anything on his own, but not stuff like this — emotions, grudges. He doesn’t get it._

_You have to be honest with him, or he’ll never learn._

Thrass sighed again, lacing his fingers together over Thrawn’s ribs so he could feel him breathing. “Why do you think I chose the icehound?” he asked.

For a moment, Thrawn was silent, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared into the fire.

“The sunset was orange, and you like orange,” he said. “It’s one of your favorite colors. And you like sunsets, too … and you liked Mother. But you’re scared of icehounds, and the background was red, and red is … it’s supposed to be a scary color. An angry color.” Thrawn lifted his head a little, pressing the back of his head against Thrass’s chest so he could meet his eyes. “The bad guys in Bista’s questis games are always red,” he said matter-of-factly. 

Thrass said nothing for a moment, letting Thrawn’s words tick over in his head. Quietly, he brushed the hair back from Thrawn’s forehead, letting his palm rest against his skin in a way he knew Thrawn found comforting.

“So what does that mean, then?” he asked, his voice low. “Tell me what you think.”

Thrawn twisted away from Thrass’s hand and met his eyes again. His face was hard to read. “That you don’t like Father,” he said, his eyes scanning up and down Thrass’s face with grave trepidation. “That you’re glad he’s dead.”

There was no sound except the wind outside and the fire crackling before them. Thrawn sat back, putting some distance between himself and Thrass. He looked confused, even a little wary and offended — confused that he hadn’t been struck for what he’d said, maybe, even though Thrass never hit him; wary that a blow was still coming; offended that his instincts might have been wrong, that Thrass _wasn’t_ going to hit him, that Thrass would dare to defy his little brother’s predictions like that. 

Only Thrawn would be offended at someone failing to strike him, Thrass thought.

“The truth is…” said Thrass, his voice heavy. He took in a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. He prodded Thrawn until he turned around again, letting Thrass pull him into a proper hug, with Thrawn’s back pressed up against Thrass’s chest. “The truth is,” said Thrass, “I didn’t look at Father’s rock when I chose it. Until just now, I didn’t know what painting was on it at all.”

He could feel Thrawn’s breathing stop for a moment as he processed this, going still against Thrass’s chest.

“The truth is I didn’t care enough about him to make sure the painting I chose was right,” Thrass said. 

He expected, in some small part of his mind, to feel the sting of tears as he said this — as he finally admitted it aloud. But no tears came. He stared into the fire calmly and coolly, holding Thrawn close to him, rubbing his circles over his ribs in the same absent-minded way Mother used to do for him when he was ill. He felt a cold relief in his chest at finally saying it aloud.

It was only when he heard a quiet sniffle that he realized Thrawn was crying again.

“Thrawn…” he said, surprised. He put his hands on Thrawn’s shoulders and tried to turn him back so he could look him in the eye, but Thrawn fought him, clenching his hands in Thrass’s coat sleeve and clinging to him with all his might. He hid his face against Thrass’s arm.

“Don’t _look_ at me,” he said fiercely, his voice broken and high-pitched with something that sounded like outrage. Thrass hesitated, his hand still hovering over Thrawn’s shoulders. 

“Alright,” he said uncertainly. “Alright, I won’t. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

For a long moment, Thrawn didn’t speak. He let go of Thrass’s coat gradually, turning to bury his face in Thrass’s chest instead. Tiny, jagged sobs escaped him every now and then, and each one was followed by a sound of frustration that wrenched at Thrass’s heart.

“Thrawn—” he started, and at just that moment, Thrawn curled one of his hands into a fist and struck Thrass weakly in the chest. “ _Thrawn_ ,” said Thrass, not hurt but surprised. He caught Thrawn’s fist as he drew back for another blow, and this time he succeeded in forcing Thrawn to look him in the eyes. “What is it?” he demanded.

Thrawn’s eyes were streaming. He gasped for breath, his body so tense that it was almost painful to hold him.

“I didn’t—” he started, and interrupted himself with a breathless sob. “I didn’t make sure, either.”

Thrass stared at him, uncomprehending, and watched as Thrawn’s face screwed up for another crying fit.

“I didn’t make sure the paintings were right,” he said, and then he collapsed against Thrass’s chest, going limp as he clung to him and cried. Dazed, Thrass wrapped his arms around Thrawn, holding him close. He could feel Thrawn’s chest heaving as he struggled for breath.

“Thrawn,” he said weakly, trying to follow the three-year-old’s line of thought. “That doesn’t mean you don’t care about them. You understand that, right?”

Thrawn’s breath stuttered, going quieter but no less ragged as he forced himself to stop crying and listen.

“We’re different people,” Thrass told him. “We have different motivations. You follow me?” When Thrawn didn’t answer, he placed one hand flat on his brother’s back and started rubbing it in circles. “I didn’t look because I didn’t care,” Thrass told him, his throat going tight as he made the admission a second time. “You didn’t look because — because you care a _lot_ , okay? And when you care a lot about someone, sometimes you can’t bear to make that kind of choice. Especially when you’re little. So you need someone else to step in and do it for you.”

Thrawn was silent. Thrass could feel him breathing evenly now and knew his tears were drying up.

“Do you understand?” he asked again, softly.

After a long moment, Thrawn shifted in Thrass’s lap, curling up into a more comfortable position. He didn’t answer verbally; he pulled Thrass’s arm closer to him, clinging to it like other children his age clung to stuffed toys. Thrass watched as Thrawn lowered his head and surreptitiously wiped his eyes on the collar of his tunic.

“‘m sorry,” Thrawn said, his voice muffled and exhausted. He sounded half-asleep, and Thrass didn’t blame him. 

“Sorry for what?” he asked.

Thrawn’s voice was, if possible, even quieter this time. “For crying.”

He stared into the fireplace after he spoke, deliberately avoiding Thrass’s eyes. Thrass took a few deep breaths, letting them out in long, slow sighs, until he was certain he could keep his voice under control.

“You’re allowed to cry now,” he said, as neutrally as he could. “You don’t have to hide it anymore. You won’t get in trouble.”

Thrawn didn’t respond — maybe he didn’t believe him — but he relaxed against Thrass a moment later, tipping his head back to rest on Thrass’s chest. It seemed like an eternity before Thrawn’s chin tilted up and his sharp eyes raked over Thrass’s face again.

“You’re not lying?” he asked.

Thrass leaned down, forcing Thrawn to squinch one eye closed so Thrass could kiss him lightly on the eyelid — the same way Mother used to show affection, so long ago now that Thrawn probably couldn’t remember. “I’m not lying,” he said as he pulled away. “I promise.”

Thrawn studied his face a moment longer before giving a tiny nod and turning around again. Thrass felt him shift in his arms, getting comfortable, and waited for more questions to come.

There were no more questions. 

When he finally glanced down, he saw that Thrawn was fast asleep.


End file.
